Dreamweaver CS6: The Missing Manual

The Widget Browser

Dreamweaver includes another way to add interactivity to your web pages with easy-to-use, preprogrammed JavaScript: the Widget Browser. You already encountered the term “widget” in the discussions above of Spry form validation, the Spry menu bar, and the other Spry mini-programs. The widgets available from the Widget Browser are similar in that they use a collection of preprogrammed JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to add useful interactivity to a page. For example, you can use widgets to add slideshows, Google Maps, HTML5 video, Twitter updates, and more to your pages.

However, these widgets aren’t built into Dreamweaver, nor do most of them use Adobe’s Spry (JavaScript) Framework. In fact, most of the widgets you find in the Browser aren’t programmed by Adobe engineers, they’re created by other programmers and placed on the Adobe Exchange website (discussed on Browse the Exchange). Because of this, the widgets don’t necessarily provide the same ease-of-use as Dreamweaver’s built-in Spry tools or behaviors. In addition, since third parties provide the widgets for free, their quality varies.

To find widgets, you use the Widget Browser, a standalone program. And for that, you need an Adobe account:

1. Visit https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/membership and click the “Create an Adobe Account” button.

   The “Join Adobe” page appears with a long form for you to fill out.

2. Fill out the form, and then press Continue.

   Fortunately, much of the form is optional, so you can leave most of it blank ...